eWeek: Sun Insists Red Hat Linux Is Proprietary

[ Thanks to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]

Sun Microsystems Inc. President Jonathan Schwartz says that he knows proprietary when he sees it and that Red Hat Inc.'s enterprise operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is proprietary.

"Following up on his earlier arguments that RHEL is proprietary, Schwartz said, 'Availability of source code isn't what qualifies you as 'not proprietary'--Sun's definition of proprietary is behavior which defeats the customer's ability to compete vendors against one another, or choose from among many 'compatible' implementations. To me, J2EE [Java 2 Enterprise Edition] is an open standard--it enables substitution and competition among multiple, competing vendors. Just like Apache...'"

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• IT Manager's Journal: Why the Markets Still Don't Trust Linux(May 08, 2004)
• LinuxWorld: "We Are Not Proprietary," Protests Red Hat--Torvalds Agrees(Apr 27, 2004)
• eWeek: Sun Pins 'Proprietary' Label on Red Hat(Apr 27, 2004)